For years Google, the ruler of the global search engine world, has continuously stressed the importance of “original content” and the “user experience” when talking about the different algorithms it uses to grade website content.

Original content is fairly self explanatory – it’s website content that you haven’t taken off another website and placed on your own as your own material. While the chances of being caught plagiarizing another websites content might be moderate – it can and does happen – the chances of avoiding detection for this by Google is very low.

While Google won’t report you to the authorities, it will penalize you in other ways, taking on the role of inquisitor, prosecutor, judge, and executioner, all in less time than it takes you to read this paragraph. The end result is your website content is ignored, wasting the time and/or money you went to creating it.

User experience refers to what users find once they visit your website. Website content that is jammed with keywords, or which contains dozens of highlighted, color coded, or underlined anchor text all contribute to distracting the visitor, creating a bad user experience.

In some cases the attempts to cram as many keywords as possible into even the shortest piece of website content can result in the material being almost unreadable or meaningless. Again, a bad user experience.

Another factor of website content that detracts from the user experience is bad, grammar and misspelt words, highlighting the benefits of investing in good website content editors.

With Google possessing tools that can detect website content that is up to 80 percent unchanged from content on another website, it’s important to get your website content right from the start. Simply copying and pasting paragraphs from one or two other websites won’t cut the mustard with Google, resulting in wasted time and effort.

Your website content is a reflection of you

Your website content is also a reflection of you, your company and the services and/or products it sells. If you are content with website content that is grammatically incorrect, which offers nothing new to website visitors, is factually wrong or which totally ignores the keywords you hope to attract customers or clients with, then that can only be deemed to reflect on the way you conduct business, your products and/or services.

The sad fact is that not every person born in an English speaking country is able to write English that is grammatically correct. Other people rush their website content because they view quantity as being more important than quality. There will be another article on this at a later date.

Writing website content is different

Writing website content is different to writing for other purposes. Take a look at any academic or government report and then compare it with how print publications write the same material.

In the internet world of the 21st century, good website content writing requires practice, patience and a knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO), if you are going to get the payback you want from your website content.

While Craigslist is full of adverts by individuals and companies willing to pay 50 cents to $2 per article for website content, the quality delivered for this piddling amount is often mediocre at best, with the feeble attempts at inserting one or two keywords into material often detracting rather than improving the usefulness of your website content.

Your website is your face to the world and your website content should reflect the quality of the goods and/services you offer. On the internet, website content is the only thing that stands you out from your competition, so it’s worth spending a few dollars to get the right result.